1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to electronic inventory management. More specifically, the present invention relates to machines, methods, and program products for facilitating electronic inventory management of products through messaging over existing financial services electronic payment networks.
2. Description of the Related Art
As computers continue to become faster and faster and as database access and database management continues to improve, the prospects of, and the desire for, instituting viable and cost-effective electronic inventory tracking systems by managing entities, e.g., manufacturers, product suppliers, shippers, etc., has evolved. A conventional application of an electronic inventory tracking system includes barcodes or radiofrequency identification tags placed on products, which can be readily scanned as products are shipped between various brick and mortar facilities. Such electronic inventory tracking systems perform superbly when the product stays within the control of the specific entity, i.e., manufacturer, product supplier, or shipper.
Such systems, however, have an inherent lag and often fail when the products are being placed outside the control of the managing entity. That is, once the products are delivered to retail merchants, for example, the managing entity must rely on the retail merchants to provide the desired data or incur significant expense to send in manual teams to collect this data. Various large retail merchants having robust information technology departments have tried to help reduce such inherent lag by allowing manufacturers and suppliers direct access to their sales activity data. Individual local franchises and other smaller retailers, however, although collectively accounting for substantial portions of the products being sold in certain select categories, generally do not have the resources to provide the manufacturers and suppliers such data in such manner—instead, periodically providing sales data in compiled reports, if at all.
As such, in order for the managing entity to determine what and how much of its product or products have been sold by the merchant, the managing entity must either wait for reports sent from the merchant, or in many cases, send a person on-site to visually inspect current inventory. Such personal visits, although having some benefits, still do not necessarily provide accurate inventory or sales reporting data. On countless occasions, the person sent to perform the on-site inspection, being only marginally familiar with the storage facilities owned by the retail merchant, may overlook a storage location that the busy retail merchants forgot to identify. Other errors occur when, for example, various inventory is misidentified or shelved improperly; an error that may only be discovered after the on-site visitor pre-orders additional product, only to have it refused by the merchant.
Although not necessarily employing or even familiar with the latest computer technology being used for inventory or sales tracking, these same retail merchants have been found to be quite familiar and extremely comfortable with employing the latest in point-of-sale (“POS”) technology. Accordingly, a machine, program product, and methods for facilitating electronic inventory management of products through messaging over existing financial services electronic payment networks which utilizes existing POS technology, and which does not require use of a conventional online computer system to retrieve sales tracking or other inventory management data is described herein.